They Know How To Party Here

I am not quite sure what its all about, but we´ve found ourselves in the midst of the week know as La Purissima. Some of you out there are probably all up on this. All I know is that every night, and at times during the day (like today) there are great throngs of people walking through the streets carrying large statues of some lady and playing all manner of instruments. As has become my patter I took a nice video that you now have the opportunity to view. Anyhow, you get to follow them, and when you get to their neighborhood you get to go to a house, sing a song, and they give you candy and stuff. This goes on for the whole week, with each neighborhood hosting at different times. And then, we keep hearing that tommorrow night, Thursday, is the real party. We shall see and you can bet we will keep you updated.

We are down to our final two days of school and are getting ready to finish and leave. its a bit sad, but at the same time I think I need some time just to experiment and try some different things out. Essentially, my brain is nearly full. A month, though, seemed to be the perfect amount of time and I have only just, in the last day or so, found myself feeling like I couldn´t take any more during class. Of course, before I started I had visions of 100% fluency after a month of immersion courses but, sadly, that hasn´t happened. We are still stuttering along, though I do think we are stuttering a bit better than we were before.

Our plan from here is to go with our family for the weekend to visit the grandparents and, when we return on Sunday head south into Costa Rica. we anticipate a week there before heading back north into nicaragua for a few days, and then onto Honduras. We haven´t done all of our research, but we think we might spend a week or so in the bay islands of honduras, and I am even contemplating enrolling in a master divers course. Supposedly, its one of the cheapest places to get diver certifications in the world. From there we would head north back to mexico and reach central mexico a few days into january.

Today we went with our family to visit the other granparents, who live about 20 km out of san juan del sur on a farm. Its the place where the senora of our house grew up, and is a beautiful plot of land with a sprawling but rustic house, a bunch of chickens, cows, some pigs and every imaginable type of fruit. They also grow platinos and wheat, as well as who knows what all. Their were a few highlights from the journey, but both christine and i went riding on their horse. Nearly everyone around here is very comfortable around horses, so they find our inexperience quite amusing. Fortunately, the gave us one of the most docile animals on the planet (either that or they fed the poor thing some very strong downers before we got on) and the ride went uneventfully. We also went walking around the farm, collecting fruit for the trip home and learning about their life on the farm. On the way home, our bus broke down and we had to hoof it back into town. Such is life, at times, in the C.A.

We hope everyone is well and miss you all!

ian